


Our Infinity

by booyouhorse



Category: The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-14
Updated: 2013-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-04 14:22:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1082049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/booyouhorse/pseuds/booyouhorse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hazel didn't believe in heaven, and she considered forever to be an incorrect concept. But when she's back in the ICU, cancer water draining from her chest but not at a rate fast enough to save her, she realizes maybe she was wrong. Right on the cusp of life and death, she considers the possibility of a capital-S Somewhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Infinity

The pain of underoxygenation is always there, like a fire smoldering away in your chest. I knew something was majorly wrong when I jolted upward out of bed, unable to voice a proper scream with the BiPAP on my face. My chest was on fire. Even the air being pushed into and out of my body wasn't helping the pain. I ripped off the mask and screamed for my parents before passing out.

When I woke up, I was lying in the familiar room of the ICU. An IV was already inserted, along with a chest tube. I turned my head to watch the amber water dribble out of me. There seemed to be an impossible amount of liquid, and still I could feel it inside me. I coughed and coughed, and my parents grabbed each other and held on because they knew just like I knew, that I was going. For years and years they've dreaded this moment and I've had way too many sleepless nights to think about it, way too many nights spent in this very room staring at the ceiling tiles and thinking about dying. But now that I actually am dying, I can't be okay with it.

I need to speak. I need to tell my parents that I love them and they were the best mother and father that anyone could've ever had, and that even though they hovered and worried and my father cried too much and my mother insisted that I deserved a life when I didn't really want one, they were still amazing parents and I love them. My untethered arm reaches out and grabs my mom's wrist and she looks at me, her eyes swimming in tears. My father's sobs are thunderous.

Once again, my lungs just don't want to let go. They're searching for air that they can't take in. My back archs as my lungs drag my torso upward, trying so hard to breathe in. It's embarrassing, but I'm in too much pain to actually be embarrassed.

In between my desperate gasps, my dad's sobs and my mother's prayers, I hear a voice. A husky, deep drawl of a voice that I would know in any lifetime.

"Hazel Grace," he murmured, and I could even hear the cigarette in his mouth. "It's okay. Okay?" I desperately wanted to reply, I wanted to shout the word, _okay_ , our "always." But I couldn't freaking breathe, so I couldn't freaking talk.

I could've easily blamed the auditory hallucination on the fact that there was an extreme lack of oxygen in my body. I could've argued with myself the existence of an afterlife and maybe that perhaps I was hearing the great star-crossed love of my life's voice from the Other Side because I was so close to dying. But I didn't want to assign blame and argue. I just wanted to drown in Augustus's voice while my lungs drowned in themselves.

I heard my life end before I felt it. The frantic beeping of the heart rate monitor spiked, and then stopped. There was that single monotone, that ominous flat line sound. I heard my parents crying, their sobs so loud I thought the ceiling might fall around them. And then all that was gone, and I was standing in front of him.

"Hazel Grace." His smile was still so gloriously beautiful, with an unlit cigarette hanging off of his lips. He was still tall, and his muscles were back. He was not the lanky, weak Gus from the last few months of our short-lived time together. He was the metaphorically-resonant Augustus that I met in Support Group. His blue eyes are even bluer, and I tumble into them.

"I've missed you terribly," he says. In one swift movement, he removes the cigarette and then I'm in his arms, and he kisses me and it's unlike any kiss we shared in our time together, because I don't have a cannula to bump against his face, and he isn't teetering on a false leg anymore, and I don't have an oxygen tank and tubes to get tangled in. He lifts me and spins me around, our lips still attached.

When he sets me down, I realize that I am healthy again. My hair isn't brittle; it's long and shiny. My skin isn't marbly and veiny; it's smooth ivory cream. My breaths aren't ragged and painful, my lungs no longer suck at being lungs.

"Where are we?" I whisper, and Augustus pulls me into another hug. His lips are at my ear when he murmurs, "Capital-S Somewhere. It exists, just like I knew it did." His voice holds mocking smugness and I laugh, and am delighted to find that laughing no longer hurts. I laugh until the only ache I feel is in my stomach. As the laughter subsides, I look up to find Gus smiling at me with that big goofy grin I missed so much. I stare at him, every part of him. I imprint him back into my memory. I inhale the scent of him that I was never able to catch again after I wrapped myself in his bed.

"How long do we have?" I ask and he chuckles.

"Hazel Grace, my love. We have a whole infinity together."


End file.
